We are a grass roots organization located in both Israel and the United States. Our intention is to be pro-active on behalf of Israel. This means we will identify the topics that need examination, analysis and promotion. Our intention is to write accurately what is going on here in Israel rather than react to the anti-Israel media pieces that comprise most of today's media outlets.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

On Tuesday I spoke at the Skirball, the evening of the next day I was back home and glancing at the number next to my latest article, "The New Nazis" saw that it was my 3000th article.

It's been an interesting ride and it was a reminder of how I got into this, by writing day in and day out and connecting with more and more people. At the event and the Chai program with Adam Taxin, I was asked how I write so much. The simple answer is that writing perpetuates itself. Words are bricks and if you put enough of them together, you build something. Initially they may be small humble abodes but as the construction continues, they become places to live in and invites others into.

The video from Skirball will be up at next week and I want to thank everyone who came to the event, those I spoke to and those I didn't get a chance to speak to, and of course all the regular readers, Doris Wise Montrose of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and the David Horowitz Freedom Center.You Can't Spell Friendship Without...

"Don't tell me French Muslims appreciate Jews - 50 percent of them hate Jews," Rabbi Michel Sarfati said on Thursday. The rabbi created the Jewish-Muslim friendship group and has traveled across France for several years preaching moderation.

As the leader of a friendship group he's clearly taking a conservative estimate.

The Million Cap March

In Oklahoma, Bob and Nancy Strait, who had been married for 65 years, had their home broken into by a black teenager unarmed except for a BB gun. The teenager beat and raped the 85 year old Nancy Strait to death. Her husband, a veteran of the 101st Airborne in WW2, is in the hospital struggling to make it.

There will be no million cap march for Bob and Nancy, two mere Americans, whose deaths cannot educate us on the evils of racism. Their killer will have pro bono lawyers and innocence projects helping him until he's finally set free again.

Certainly Obama will make no statement on how Nancy Strait could have been his grandmother or how Bob Strait could have been that uncle who "liberated Auschwitz". Mitt Romney did not pop up to call for a "thorough investigation", reminding us of why Santorum kinda had a point about him.

What's the real difference between Tyrone Woodfork and Trayvon Martin? It will take a lot of work to make Woodfork look like the martyr that the media has already turned Trayvon into. Instead we'll get Hour 24 of screeching coverage about Trayvon Martin and white racism because a Hispanic neighborhood watch captain with black family members shot a black teenager.

President Barack Obama on Friday called for a full investigation into the shooting of an unarmed African-American teenager in Florida, saying the U.S. needs to do some "soul searching" to determine what led to his death

You know if Obama has enough free time between his golfing, his bankrupting of the United States and his race baiting, he might want to do some "soul searching" to determine what led to the death of a whole bunch of Mexicans south of the border. Hint, it involves his Attorney General who's foaming at the mouth to intervene in a local law enforcement issue.

The Terrible Twos

In a particularly mealy-mouthed Telegraph piece Ed West tries to explain why Islam has nothing to do with this...

Many people kill in the name of jihad but they do not represent Islam or Muslims... It is not religion that turns some young Muslim men in the West violent, but the sense of alienation and frustration that inevitably comes from being a second-generation immigrant.

But what is Jihad? Is it a separate religion apart from Islam?

This interesting theory that somehow being a second-generation immigrant leads to one being a serial killer has one problem... France is full of Jewish immigrants from North Africa, many of whom are second and third generation. Oddly enough they don't seem to be going on killing sprees.

Confused and angry young men easily attach themselves to something greater than themselves

But what is this thing that they are attaching themselves to? Is it Islam? Can't be. Ed has just told us that Islam has nothing to do with it. What mysterious "greater thing" is it then? Unfortunately it will have to remain a mystery.

The Kosovo Dog Hunters Club

With Kosovo "liberated" to be a properly Muslim place, the locals are engaging in an annual bit of cheerful dog hunting. Mohammed did say that all dogs, or at least all black dogs, should be killed.

Directorate for Protection and Rescue of Mitrovica municipality, in cooperation with Kosovo Police and Sports Hunters Association “Trepca” has started this action, which will last one month.The director of this department, Behxhet Bala, said that the owners of domestic dogs are obligated not to let out domestic dogs on the streets as long as this phase of action for stray dogs’ liquidation lasts.

Not too surprisingly, this reads almost exactly like Nazi bulletins about the "actions" for the extermination of Jews during WW2.

This isn't animal control, this is local sports hunters shooting dogs in the street.

Locals say that many of the dogs that have been shot by the hunters are suffering a slow death, and that agonizing howls can be heard across the city

I suppose when you run low on Serbs and Jews to kill... you have to make do with dogs.

Many of the dogs belonged to the original non-Muslim inhabitants who had been ethnically cleansed by Muslim KLA terrorists in association with the Clinton Administration. Now they're strays to be gunned down.

For some reason the US embassy seems to think that the Muslim gunmen may not stop with dogs and issued a bulletin about our wonderful allies.

We urge U.S. citizens to exercise caution and avoid walking or driving the streets of Pristina during the time of the operation due to the danger of stray gunfire. If you have pets, ensure that they are secured inside your residence. The Embassy recommends that you do not leave pets outside in your yard during this operation.

Within Pristina city limits, you may hear sporadic gunshots from the culling operation at night.

Just like old times. And we fought a war on behalf of the cullers and now we're watching over them as they go about their rounds.

French Intelligence as Impressive as Ever

Also today, a senior official who is close to the investigation into Merah's attacks told The Associated Press there was no sign Merah had "trained or been in contact with organized groups or jihadists" such as al Qaeda.

The official said Merah might have made the claim because al Qaeda is a well-known "brand." The official said authorities have "absolutely no element allowing us to believe that he was commissioned by al Qaeda to carry out these attacks."

Disagreeing with senior French officials is... Al Qaeda.

Al-Qaida linked group Jund al-Khilafah has claimed responsibility for shootings this week in France, according to a statement posted on jihadist websites on Thursday.

But if Muslim terrorists are said not to be Muslims or terrorists, if we are to believe that Western liberals know the Koran better than the Jihadists do, why not assume that French senior officials know better who is in Al-Qaeda than Al-Qaeda.

"Stop taking responsibility, we know this was the act of a lone gunman suffering from alienation and French racism."

What Separates Us From the Terrorists

The people of France, all people, but especially Jews and Muslims, must see that that the entire nation mourns the death of innocents --that whatever one’s faith or politics, what occurred is a national tragedy.

There is the almost impossible, but truly necessary, task of not totally demonizing the murderer. I am supporter of the death penalty. Were he alive, I would work to see this murderer go to the top of the list. But in the spirit of Talmudic tradition, I would still be challenged to see him as a human being - one, who no matter how guilty, leaves behind people who loved him. In fact, that awareness is one of the things which separates our culture from that of the terrorists.

Actually what separates us from the terrorists is that we are also led by moral retards, but our moral retards are self-destructive, while theirs are destructive.

I Don't Know... Maybe It's Because a Muslim Terrorist Just Killed a Bunch of Kids?

President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is campaigning for re-election in the April-May poll, has proposed tougher security measures, such as sanctions for people whose frequent viewing of jihadist websites could mean links to radical Islamism. “This is going to raise questions about our system of integration, our approach to (Islamic) fundamentalism and our tolerance of certain practices here. You’re going to hear a lot about that in the weeks to come,” a senior Sarkozy campaign adviser said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Lahsen Edbas, 29, a Muslim grocery store worker in the eastern Paris suburb of Le Raincy, echoed a widespread skepticism about the Paris elite: “Why is all this happening now, just before an election?”

5 million is pretty widespread.

Noted Lefty Hero Rants About Rich Jews

A group of very senior members of the Jewish community in London met Mr Livingstone earlier this month to discuss his support for and links with a radical Islamist cleric and the television station that makes propaganda in Britain for Iran.

In a leaked letter to the Jewish Chronicle – more of a communique really – they said Labour’s London mayoral candidate used the words Zionist, Jewish and Israeli as if they meant the same thing and that his language was close to ‘classic anti-semitism’.

They added: ‘Ken, towards the end of the meeting, stated that he did not expect the Jewish community to vote Labour as votes for the left are inversely proportional to wealth levels, and suggested that as the Jewish community is rich, we simply wouldn’t vote for him.’

...No racism to see here. Just good clean Anti-Zionism.

This Was a Declaration of War...Against Diversity

To emphasize this narrative they then interviewed a French female journalist living in London who claimed that what was terrible about the attack was that the killer was 'French' and that it was therefore 'an attack against diversity'. She said that it was all down to the racist climate in France which had been made worse by Nikolas Sarkozy in the last five years and she picked out, as an example of racist lack of tolerance, the burka ban he had introduced.

Clearly this is yet another example of Burka bans leading non-Muslims to kill Muslims. Reality bubble, what reality bubble? Communism is moving forward. The next harvest will be the most productive ever. There are no American soldiers in Baghdad Airport. Islam is the religion of peace.

Democracy... Who Needs it Anyway

Remember when we were overthrowing Mubarak in democracy's name? Democracy now? Not so much. We don't need no stinking democracy, now that we have the Brotherhood in power.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton waived congressional conditions imposed late last year that tied U.S. aid to progress in Egypt’s transition to democracy following the ouster of longtime President Hosni Mubarak.

Who says Congress gets to make budgets anyway. Or laws. It's not like we need that stinking democracy either when we have the Pharaoh of Hope and Change.

English Lesson Becomes Muslim Lesson

A French teacher faced disciplinary proceedings Friday for allegedly urging her class to observe a minute's silence for serial killer Mohamed Merah, the day after he was shot by police.

Education Minister Luc Chatel called for the teacher to be suspended after her class reported she had called Merah a "victim" and said his links to Al-Qaeda were invented by the media and "Sarko", referring to President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The good news is there's a bright media career ahead of her. But like Merah, it's of course due to her being poor and crazy. But mostly crazy.

"This is not the political act of an extremist but the act of a colleague who has health concerns, who is fragile and who is receiving psychological treatment," the local head of the SGEN-CFDT union, Pascal Bossuyt, told AFP.

"She said something unfortunate in a particular context and she immediately regretted what she said," he added.

But I'm a little confused here.

If she's really "fragile and crazy", then why did she immediately regret it? Either she's crazy or she's not. I guess she's just crazy in a particularly unfortunate context.

Thought Crime

“It is impossible to arrest someone just because he has Salafist views,” said French Interior Minister Claude Gueant, referring to Merah’s jihadist sympathies. “Holding a particular point of view is not a crime.”

That's mighty American of Old Claude, but oddly enough Brigitte Bardot was put on trial for saying Muslims were destroying the country.

Just to recap, it's not a crime to be a Salafist, but it is a crime to believe that Muslims are not exactly making France a better place.

Food Fascism

The Bloomberg administration is now taking the term "food police" to new depths, blocking food donations to all government-run facilities that serve the city's homeless. In conjunction with a mayoral task force and the Health Department, the Department of Homeless Services recently started enforcing new nutritional rules for food served at city shelters. Since DHS can't assess the nutritional content of donated food, shelters have to turn away good Samaritans.

...

DHS Commissioner Seth Diamond says the ban on food donations is consistent with Mayor Bloomberg's emphasis on improving nutrition for all New Yorkers. A new interagency document controls what can be served at facilities -- dictating serving sizes as well as salt, fat and calorie contents, plus fiber minimums and condiment recommendations.

Sure there's a certain amount of food fascism at work here, but more importantly allowing people and groups to help the homeless reduces the complete monopoly of official organizations to harvest the homeless as funding sources.

You can see the same logic behind the Federal and state assault on Catholic social services. Everyone who has worked with non-profits knows how jealous orgs are of their donors and turf. But now all that money is going to have to go through the government.

It's Illegal Not to Discriminate in Sentencing on the Basis of Race

Just ...wait it's coming here too

Sentencing judges who do not carefully consider lenient or creative sentences for aboriginal offenders are violating the law, the Supreme Court of Canada said in a major aboriginal law decision today.

Releasing rulings in a pair of much-anticipated cases that go to the heart of separate treatment for aboriginal offenders, the court said that considering factors such as cultural oppression and a history of abuse in the residential school system must be central to the sentencing process.

“When sentencing an Aboriginal offender, courts must take judicial notice of such matters as the history of colonialism, displacement, and residential schools and how that history continues to translate into lower educational attainment, lower incomes, higher unemployment, higher rates of substance abuse and suicide, and of course higher levels of incarceration for Aboriginal peoples,” a 6-1 majority said.

Is there even any point in calling an abomination like this a justice system? Were there supreme court verdicts in the slave era United States that said that courts were obligated to treat white defendants better than those of other races?

That decision – R v. Gladue – was intended to usher in particular sensitivity to the pressures and deprivations many aboriginals have suffered, at the same time as reducing the disproportionate number of aboriginal offenders in prison.

I suppose if you give aboriginal offenders disproportionately light sentences, that will reduce their presence in prison. It won't reduce their criminal behavior, it's likely to only increase it. This may lead to the paradoxical situation where more crimes are committed, resulting in more convictions, even with the disproportionately light sentences, so that even more aboriginals end up in prison.

Racial social manipulation sometimes backfires that way.

If you want to know the origin of this decision and who Gladue, the tragic aboriginal persecuted by "The Man" was.... the case goes a little something like this.

On September 16, 1995 Jamie Tanis Gladue was drinking and celebrating her 19th birthday with some friends. She suspected that the victim, her boyfriend, was having an affair with the offender's older sister, Tara. Gladue made specific threats that "he was going to get it." Following a confrontation with the victim, he uttered many insults at the offender, at which point the offender stabbed the victim in the chest. She was subsequently charged with second degree murder and ultimately convicted of manslaughter. At her sentencing hearing the judge took into account many aggravating factors including the fact that the offender was not afraid of the victim. The court also took into account several mitigating factors such as her youth, her status as a mother and the absence of any serious criminal history. She was sentenced to three years imprisonment. At her trial and at the Court of Appeal for British Columbia the court upheld the sentence, finding that s. 718.2(e) did not apply to off-reserve Aboriginals.

To recap this thoroughly horrifying amoral madness

1. A 19 year old woman stabbed her husband/boyfriend, not in self-defense.

2. She only got three years in jail for it.

3. The court took into account every possible factor that it could, including that she hadn't stabbed anyone before. It didn't however take into account that she only stabbed her boyfriend because of colonialism.

4. Don't imagine that the tragic victim of Canadian colonialism served three years in prison for stabbing her husband to death. She got out in six months with electronic monitoring... and she appealed that.

5. The Court didn't actually alter her sentence, which she had already served, and they couldn't short of descending into a level of insanity too great to even contemplate.

But in a decision from an alternate universe in the strange year 1999, the Canadian Supreme Court was still outraged at well... Canada.

Writing in vivid terms about a case in which a native woman killed her husband, the court said the conscience of Canadians ought to be shocked by the rate at which aboriginals are tossed behind bars.

No one thinks that Jamie's conscience ought to be the one operating here. Canadians should feel guilty because they're somehow responsible for her being sentenced to jail after she stabbed her husband. The only solution is not to send aboriginals to jail for killing people. It's madness, but it's not Sparta.

But assuming Miss Gladue's boyfriend/husband was also an aboriginal, wouldn't it be more compassionate not to give aboriginals a free "Kill Someone Who Might Be an Aboriginal" pass?

The Court said every attempt should be taken to divert aboriginals away from prison and toward alternatives, especially those connected with their heritage. It said these may range from aboriginal sentencing and healing circles to restitution and aboriginal community council projects.

These alternatives are not necessarily "lighter" punishment than prison, the court argued, since taking responsibility and facing one's community can be more frightening.

I spend a lot of time writing about the left, about their motives and their minds, but sometimes you stare into the abyss and realize that you have encountered complete hopeless madness in the highest places.

Friday, March 23, 2012

Laura: The blood of that Rabbi and those three precious children are on the hands of the leftist media, academia, western governments and the various NGO’s and other anti-Israel, pro-fakestinian activists, BDS movements, campus anti-Israel hatefests throughout the western world. They all have collaborated in disseminating blood libels, vicious lies, historical revisionism regarding the Jewish state. Whether it be for political ideology, geopolitical or economic purposes, various forces in the west have collaborated in spreading the big lie that the Jewish people are usurpers, colonialist occupiers in their native land which they have a 5000 year history in.

To keep the oil flowing, the west chose an unholy alliance with the Arab-muslim world, made the Jewish state a sacrificial lamb and unleashed a global jihad and the prospect of another holocaust against the Jewish people. Yet still the treachery continues as Israel is pressured to make more concessions to genocidal enemies and the west continues to allow the massive influx of muslims into their countries, endangering its citizens lives and destroying their freedoms with the introduction of sharia and blasphemy laws. The blood of the Rabbi and those three children are on the hands of those who have welcomed the savages into their countries in the name of multiculturalism and tolerance. Tolerance towards those who harbor genocidal hatred. And the blood of those victims is on the hands of those who continue to deny that islam is at war with us and politicians who proclaim that islam is a peaceful religion which has been hijacked by a few extremists. This is pure nonesense and they must know that. No one can be that oblivious. It is not “extremist” or “radical” islam nor is it “islamism”, a phony term if there ever was one. A word wholly invented by westerners who want to avoid being called islamophobic or racist so therefore create an artificial distinction. There is only islam. And that murdering jihadist monster in France simply carried out the acts prescribed by authentic islam.

Laying the groundwork for the Toulouse massacre

By Melanie Phillips

When the Toulouse school massacre happened, the media rushed to say that the perpetrator was a white far-right racist. The lone gunman had mown down at close range a rabbi and three children at a Jewish school, wounding several others. He was thought to be the same killer who a few days earlier had murdered three black French paratroopers in two separate attacks. A killer who targeted Jews and blacks – must be a far-right white racist, right?

Massacre: Three children were gunned down at a Jewish school in ToulouseMassacre: Three children were gunned down at a Jewish school in Toulouse

Wrong. The suspect who the French police have now cornered turns out to be a jihadi Islamic terrorist with self-declared links to al Qaeda, who has made trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan in the past. Well, there’s a surprise.Jews throughout the world are all potential targets for attack in a terrifying manifestation of global incitement to murder. Many Islamists regularly declare their intention to kill Jews wherever they can find them. Hundreds of rockets fired from Gaza at southern Israel over the past couple of weeks bear out daily the frenzied attempt to murder as many Jews as possible. In the Mumbai massacre in 2008, it turned out that the attack on the tiny ultra-orthodox Lubavitch centre was for the Islamic perpetrators of that atrocity the most important target. There have been repeated terrorist attempts on Jewish targets around the world. Oh – and Islamists have been murdering black people in Libya because they are black.

Little Gabriel, 3, was the younger of Rabbi Yonaton Sandler's sons to be murdered in Toulouse.

It has been revealed that this beautiful child had been named for Rabbi Gavriel Horowitz, who was horrendously slaughtered in Mumbai shortly before he was born.

Rabbi Shimon Rosenberg, father of Gavriel's wife Rivki, who was murdered alongside her husband, attended the Sandler funeral yesterday.

~~~~~~~~~~

Gabriel's murderer is dead now: after a 36-hour police siege, a gun battle ensued and then, as Mohammed Merah jumped from a window, police shot him in the head. They say they had hoped to take him alive.

This doesn't bring back those whom he killed -- but police indicated he had been planning additional attacks and he is now out of commission for good. I observed, in yesterday's posting, that the French cannot dismiss the Toulouse murders as an aberration, a case of one kook who was influenced by evil associates in a far-off place. The enemy, which is certainly radical Islam, must be named, I said: There are, without a shadow of a doubt, a good many radical Muslims in France...It's time to talk about these things.

That was before I saw the report from the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliyah. And now that I have (thanks to Judith N.), I am doubly convinced of the need to talk -- volumes -- about what's going on.

"According to various French sources, Merah was linked to Forsane Al'Izza [The Brave Horseman], a radical Salafist group that operates in France..."

The Institute describes a video by French Salafists calling themselves by that name that it had monitored. The video, "which was filmed in Paris and is in French, decries French Islamophobia and what Forsane Al'Izza calls 'the campaign of incitement and persecution' being waged by French public figures, led by President Sarkozy, against France’s Muslim population and against the group. In the clip, Forsane Al'Izza declares that it does not recognize France’s secular democratic regime, and is working to see shari’a [Islamic religious law] implemented in France...the clip praised the efforts of Forsane Al'Izza to protect the downtrodden Muslims in infidel lands..." (Emphasis added)http://www.ict.org.il/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=99fFLwpcQLQ%3d&tabid=320

~~~~~~~~~~

Daniel Greenfield, writing as Sultan Knish, doesn't mince words, and in "The New Nazis" he's especially on the mark with regard to what's transpiring today in France:

"There was a time when Jewish children were hunted down and killed in France. Their killers believed themselves to be members of a superior group that was destined to rule the world and enslave or exterminate members of inferior groups. The cowardice and appeasement of the French authorities allowed them to operate freely, to kill Jews and launch attacks on other countries.

"What was then is now again. The occupying army doesn't wear uniforms, it wears keffiyahs. It doesn't speak German, it speaks Arabic. It doesn't believe that it is superior for reasons of race as much as for reasons of religion. It does not view all others as Untermenschen, but as infidels. It looks forward not to a thousand year Reich, but to a thousand year Caliphate."Between all the non-stop coverage, the expressions of grief, the political pandering, no one is stating the obvious. France has been occupied all over again. Once again the occupation has been carried out with the consent of the authorities who have decided that cowardice is the only way. Vichy France has become Vichy Europe...where the blatant appeasement is disguised as honor...

"...The old Nazis marched in at the head of an army. The new Nazis bought a plane ticket. The old Nazis had to get by the French Armed Forces and the Royal Air Force. The new Nazis are welcomed in and anyone who says a word otherwise faces trials and jail sentences. The old Nazis deported Jews to camps. The new Nazis kill them right in the cities. And the killing will not stop until the Muslim occupation of Europe comes to an end." (Emphasis added)

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2012/03/new-nazis.html

~~~~~~~~~~

Prime Minister Netanyahu has gone to visit the bereaved families from Toulouse. He told Ava Sandler that Israel will do everything possible to help her. And he said, "the State of Israel was established to be a shield for the Jewish People."

This is, in fact, a huge point, which should never be forgotten.

PM on condolence visitCredit: PMO

~~~~~~~~~~

Before moving to other subjects, one last point. Obama has placed a somewhat delayed call of condolence to President Sarkozy with regard to what happened in Toulouse. What does it tell us that -- even though some of the murdered were Israeli citizens, and they were all buried in Israel, and all of Israel mourned -- he did not, to the very best of my knowledge, call Netanyahu as well?

~~~~~~~~~~

I also mentioned yesterday that the Israeli Ambassador to Egypt had left the country. I now have it from a reliable source that this does not seem to be permanent and he is expected to go back in. Documents from the Embassy in Egypt apparently have been flown to Israel, however, suggesting a situation that is less than secure.

Last Wednesday, I heard Daniel Pipes, head of the Middle East Forum, address a Knesset committee on immigration. There was no Egyptian revolution, Pipes declared. There was only a coup d'etat. The military remains firmly in charge.

Saturday night, I head Israeli commentator and author Barry Rubin speak. Don't imagine for a second, he told his audience, that the military is solidly in charge in Egypt. The situation is very unstable and the Islamists are moving in.

Oh.

A signal lesson on how difficult it is to interpret the very fluid and rapidly fluctuating events in this part of the world.

The fact that the Israeli ambassador to Egypt had left the country seemed to be -- but in the end apparently was not -- of particular significance because just last week Egypt's parliament, which is dominated by Islamists, voted to expel Israel's ambassador. This was just a symbolic vote, as the ruling Military Council makes the decisions on such matters and is not interested in breaking its relationship with Israel.

The overriding question is how long this situation will hold.

~~~~~~~~~~

A NYTimes article on Iran of a few days ago irked me greatly, and I have been wanting to address it -- as many of you may have seen it.

In brief, the article said that US intelligence people believe that Iran stopped working on a nuclear bomb in 2003 and have not started again -- and that basically the Mossad agrees, even though Israeli politicians are pushing for a quick attack.

The goal here, once again, was to represent the Israeli government as "trigger happy": Look, even the Mossad says Iran isn't building a bomb.

But the logic here is seriously flawed. For Israel has never claimed Iran is building a bomb now. Rather the concern is that Iran is developing the potential to do so, and has, in fact, already reached what is called a point of no return. That is, Iran has done sufficient development domestically at present to be able to build that bomb should it want to, without having to resort to assistance or equipment from the outside.

This is a major point that is all too often glossed over. It represents a significant difference in what Israel and the US see as the red line with regard to Iran. The US, it seems, is prepared to wait until Iran is actually starting to build that bomb (which, depending on sources, might take anywhere from two months to a year). Israel is not prepared to wait that long.

~~~~~~~~~~

Dore Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, was asked recently if there is proof that Iran has a nuclear program. His response: If you saw someone come into the kitchen and take out the bread, and the peanut butter and the jelly, you'd be pretty sure he was going to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. This is where we are now with regard to Iran. All the elements are in place. They have enriched uranium beyond what they would need for domestic purposes. How much proof do you need?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syddleJjDUc&feature=youtu.be

~~~~~~~~~~

Bret Stephen's "The Bogus Iran Intelligence Debate" offers both a similar analogy and a sophisticated analysis:

"All this [debate about intelligence] sounds like it matters a whole lot. It doesn't. You may not be able to divine whether a drinker, holding a bottle of Johnnie Walker in one hand and a glass tinkling with ice in the other, actually intends to pour himself a drink. And perhaps he doesn't. But the important thing, at least when it comes to intervention, is not to present him with the opportunity in the first place.

"That's what was so misleading about the 2007 NIE, which relegated to a footnote the observation that 'by "nuclear weapons program" we mean Iran's nuclear weapons design and weaponization work...[W]e do not mean Iran's declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment.' What the NIE called 'civil work' is, in fact, the central piece in assembling a nuclear device. To have sufficient quantities of enriched uranium is, so to speak, the whiskey of a nuclear-weapons program. By contrast, 'weaponization'—the vessel into which you pour and through which you can deliver the enriched uranium cocktail—is merely the glass. (Emphasis added)

"...In other words, having a debate about the quality of our Iran intelligence is mostly an irrelevance: Iran's real nuclear-weapons program is hiding in plain sight. The serious question policy makers must answer isn't whether Iran will go for a bomb once it is within a half-step of getting one. It's whether Iran should be allowed to get within that half-step.

"...it should come as no surprise that an intelligence community meant to provide decision makers with disinterested analysis has, in practice, policy goals and ideological axes of its own. (Emphasis added)

"...For real intelligence, merely consider that a regime that can take a rock in its right hand to stone a woman to death should not have a nuclear bomb within reach of its left.

The toughest sanctions yet have now been imposed on Iran: Belgium’s Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), which handles most international bank transfers, has eliminated Iran from its services.

There is no question in my mind but that this tougher stance was generated because PM Netanyahu -- as a centerpiece of his public statements -- has expressed Israeli concerns and maintained that Israeli has a right to defend herself. Sad, that it takes fear of an Israeli hit to make nations respond, when they should be responding simply because the situation requires such action.

Undoubtedly, these new sanctions will generate additional difficulties for Iran. Whether they will prove pivotal in convincing the Iranians to halt what they are doing remains highly dubious. There are always loopholes and nations willing to work with Iran. Just this week, the Obama administration announced that it will exempt a group of European countries and Japan from financial sanctions, because they have significantly curtailed their oil imports from Iran.

~~~~~~~~~~

There is broad expectation, but not certainty, that in the course of time Israel will hit Iran. The over-riding question is when. What has become increasingly clear to me is that Israel may be in possession of bunker busters powerful enough to extend the window of time for doing so.

~~~~~~~~~~

The UN Human Rights Council has now adopted a resolution that establishes a major "fact-finding mission" to investigate alleged violations of human rights committed by Israel with regard to "settlements."

Prime Minister Netanyahu's response to this outrage:

“This is a hypocritical council with an automatic majority against Israel. This council ought to be ashamed of itself.

"Until today, the council has made 91 decisions, 39 of which dealt with Israel, three with Syria and one with Iran. One only had to hear the Syrian representative speak today about human rights in order to understand how detached from reality the council is. Another proof of its detachment from reality came last week when it invited before it a representative of Hamas, an organization whose ideology is based on the murder of innocents."

~~~~~~~~~~

Let me close, then, with a wonderful video of Kenneth Meshoe, a black member of the South African parliament, who explains why the notion that Israeli is an apartheid state is ridiculous. See it, save it, share it when Israel is attacked.

See my website at www.arlenefromisrael.info Contact Arlene at akushner@netvision.net.il

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Thursday, March 22, 2012

Terrorist Dalal Mughrabi -killer of 12 children and 25 adults -still celebrated as hero and role model by the PA and Fatah

by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik

While the Palestinian Authority condemned the killing of the 3 Jewish children and one adult this week in France as a "terrorist crime," the PA continued its policy, as documented many times by Palestinian Media Watch, of presenting Palestinian terrorist Dalal Mughrabi, killer of 12 Israeli children and 25 adults, as a hero and role model.

Speaking about the killings of 4 Jews in Toulouse, France, PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad condemned the killings:"This terrorist crime is condemned in the strongest terms by the Palestinianpeople and our children... No Palestinian child can accept crimes againstinnocent people." [Ma'an, Palestinian News Agency, March 21, 2012] However, Palestinian Authority leaders, spokespeople and the official Fatah Facebook page have recently found it appropriate to honor terrorist Dalal Mughrabi, who, with other terrorists, killed 37 innocent people:

"This is Dalal, my eternal love... Dalal is my mysterious young woman, my revolutionary Jihadi inspiration. I loved her but knew only her name, Dalal Mughrabi."Fatah official Facebook page, accessed March 22, 2012]

"The bride of the coast, Dalal Mughrabi, and other female fighters have roles of honor in the national struggle."[Governor of Ramallah and El-Bireh Laila Ghannam, March 17, 2012]

"Dalal was a model of a fighting Palestinian woman... who fulfilled her obligation towards her land and homeland."[PA Civil Defense Commissioner Abu Al-Sheikh, March 7, 2012]

"We have days of heroism that were recorded by women... Martyrs (Shahidas) like Dalal Mughrabi and others."[Women's rights activist, Zaynab Al-Ghanimi, March 7, 2012]

There was a time when Jewish children were hunted down and killed in France. Their killers believed themselves to be members of a superior group that was destined to rule the world and enslave or exterminate members of inferior groups. The cowardice and appeasement of the French authorities allowed them to operate freely, to kill Jews and launch attacks on other countries.

What was then is now again. The occupying army doesn't wear uniforms, it wears keffiyahs. It doesn't speak German, it speaks Arabic. It doesn't believe that it is superior for reasons of race as much as for reasons of religion. It does not view all others as Untermenschen, but as infidels. It looks forward not to a thousand year Reich, but to a thousand year Caliphate. Mohammed Merah did not chase down a French-Jewish seven year old girl, put a gun to her head and pull the trigger because he came from an economically depressed area or any of the other media spin. He was only doing what Muslims had been doing to non-Muslims for over a thousand years. He didn't do what he did because he was "radicalized", he did it because he became a fully committed Muslim.

It won't end with taking down one man and it won't end with Jewish children. When your ideology believes that it is in a zero-sum struggle with the rest of the world and that membership means that you are a superior breed of human being because you worship the Fuhrer or Allah, then it won't stop. It won't ever stop. Not until the figurehead is toppled, the creed is humiliated and the supermen are shown to be cowards, neurotics, pedophiles, insecure men dressing up their weaknesses in power fantasies.

Between all the non-stop coverage, the expressions of grief, the political pandering, no one is stating the obvious. France has been occupied all over again. Once again the occupation has been carried out with the consent of the authorities who have decided that cowardice is the only way. Vichy France has become Vichy Europe, Vichy America, Vichy Australia, where the blatant appeasement is disguised as honor, treason is portrayed as responsible leadership and collaboration in the mass murder of your own people is never acknowledged as such.

It's not Neo-Nazis that are the threat to Jews today. It's the new Nazis and the old Nazis who were rounding up Jews into ghettos and murdering their children long before a thousand years before Hitler. The Neos are pathetically longing for the return of a genocidal state that isn't coming back, while the Muslims are actually working to bring back their genocidal state. They are doing it in Egypt, in Libya, in Pakistan and in England, France and Spain.

Muslims have hated Jews before the telephone, the telegraph, the steam engine, gunpowder, movable type and paper currency. And now surrounded by smartphones, credit cards and jet planes, they still hate them. That simple undeniable fact is denied by government, in every university and in every center of culture. And every one of those deniers has blood on his hands.

Not only the blood of the Jewish children murdered by Mohammed Merah. Not only the blood of Jews murdered by Muslims in France. But the blood of all those who have been killed by Muslim immigrants, no matter of what generation, in the name of Islam.

The names of Chamberlain, Petain and Quisling have become eternally infamous because they stand for appeasement and collaboration. But then what do we make of the names Blair, Sarkozy and Stoltenberg? What have the latter done differently from their predecessors? The left likes to pretend that its collaboration with Islam is moral, while the collaboration with Nazism was immoral. It's a distinction without a difference.

Does it really matter whether the men murdering children in the name of their Fuhrer call him Adolf or Mohammed? Does it matter whether they call themselves Hans or Mohammed? Does it matter whether their fantasies of superiority are based on bad science or bad religion? What matters is the end result. A foreign enemy controls your cities, murders at will and takes your future for his own.

The Tolouse Massacre did not come out of the blue, it follows decades of Muslim violence in France-- a Kristalnacht that has been going on year after year. It will not stop here. Not while there are five million Muslim in France, some of whom are bound to pick up the Koran and take it seriously. The "radical" clerics that Mohammed Merah listened to did not innovate a new religion, there has never been any basis to the teachings of the so-called radicals other than the Koran. The only book more popular in the Muslim world than Mein Kampf.

"O Muslims, O Servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him." That is what Muslims look forward to in their end times. Rocks and trees that tell them where the Jews are so that the fat faithful servants of Allah don't have to spend too much time and energy searching for their victims. Mohammed Merah did not have any trees or rocks to tell him where to find Jews to kill. But he had a compliant French state which tolerated a known Jihadist to the detriment of his victims.

The question, as always, after every act of Muslim terror is how many more must die? How many? Because the killing will continue. It has gone on for over a thousand years. It is not about to stop now. Muslim leaders who condemn these acts do it for tactical reasons, not moral ones. They don't believe it's wrong to kill rebellious non-Muslims... unless the act rebounds against non-Muslims.

The difference between the "radicals" and the "moderates" is that the radicals want to engage in genocide even while they are a minority, while the moderates want to wait until they are a majority. The radicals are satisfied with killing a few Hindus, Christians, Jews, here and there. The moderates want to wait and kill millions. Neither are our allies. Both are our murderers.

There is no peaceful way forward here. Carving up Czechoslovakia, Cyprus or Israel will not sate the blood lust of people whose egos are fed by hate, who treat every concession as proof of their own superiority, who love nothing so much as for others to fear them. There is no peace to be had with a creed that defines peace exclusively in terms of its own dominance over others.

Islam, like Nazism, is a disease of the soul, a twin sense of superiority and victimhood possessed by the angry corner dwellers of the world, who are certain that they would rule if only it wasn't for all the others holding them back. To understand a Nazi or a Muslim, you don't need to learn their creeds, just stare into the eyes of a wife beater, a pedophile or any bully and you will see that same smirk which easily transforms into outrage, the arrogant tone that turns unctuous when it is set back on its heels, the flickering eyes that are always looking at what they can't have.

You don't need to read the Koran to understand Mohammed Merah, you can just as easily understand the Koran by reading about what Mohammed Merah did. Nothing much has changed in all the centuries, except that Mohammed Merah didn't get to rape the girl he murdered, because the French state was still functional enough to keep him on the run. The day will however come when it won't be and then the peoples of the free world will learn what true Muslim terror really is, as the peoples of Africa and Asia, as the many other religions of the Middle East, including the Jews learned, in the day of the original Mohammed.

There is nothing extraordinary about what Mohammed Merah did. You may think that there is, but that is because you are a citizen of the free world and you have become used to that rare thing known as civilized behavior. But when your nations opened their borders to people who consider your infidel lands, the Dar Al-Harb, the House of the Sword, then civilization gets its throat cut, it gets chased down at a school, has a gun put to its head and the trigger gets pulled.

Killing children is not a shocking act in the Middle East, except when CNN points its cameras the right way. Parents routinely kill their own children for minor offenses that would hardly get an American child grounded. When they move to America or Canada, they kill their children there too and we considerately look away. If they do that to their children, why do you think they will have any more mercy on yours?

There is no point in holding Mohammed Merah accountable for what he did, just as there was no point in bringing Nazi leaders to trial for crimes against humanity. Mohammed recognizes no form of law other than the law of Islam, just as the Nazis recognized no other form of humanity than their own. There is no common moral or legal system that we share with Islam. Equality before the law, the cornerstone of our system, is so much noise in the windy corridors of the mosque. How can the Subhuman be equal to the Aryan, how can the Infidel be equal to the Muslim?

Mohammed Merah is a mad dog and should be treated as what he is. Accountability is for those who share our moral system. It is for our own leaders who continue perpetuating the macabre myth of a religion of peace, even while attending the funerals of tis victims. Accountability is for the Petains, the Chamberlains and the Quislings who have led us into this hole and keep waving in more Mohammeds to come and join the party.

The old Nazis marched in at the head of an army. The new Nazis bought a plane ticket. The old Nazis had to get by the French Armed Forces and the Royal Air Force. The new Nazis are welcomed in and anyone who says a word otherwise faces trials and jail sentences. The old Nazis deported Jews to camps. The new Nazis kill them right in the cities. And the killing will not stop until the Muslim occupation of Europe comes to an end.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Hamas has refused to accept fuel from Israel and now is coping with a deepening economic crisis by offering free lifts to workers.

The de facto Hamas government in Gaza ordered civil servants to offer rides to people during daytime work hours in order to survive the self-imposed lack of fuel.

In addition, Hamas cut in half the fuel allowances for its 1,800 official cars, according to the Bethlehem-based Ma'an news agency.Hamas ministers said the lack of fuel is due to the alleged Israeli blockade, which has in effect been lifted on all materials not used for terrorist activities, but the local administration has refused Israel’s offers to continue fuel shipments.

The Gaza government also turned its fury on the rival Fatah-led Palestinian Authority based in Ramallah, accusing it of stopping the European Union from funding a power station in Gaza.

In the meantime, Hamas remains dependent on Egypt, which is dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood of which Hamas is an offspring.

One benefactor of the fuel shortage is the tunnel smuggling industry and Hamas, which imposes heavy taxes on fuel and merchandise brought into Gaza from Egypt via the tunnels.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

In the fall of 2005, a cheerful editorial appeared in The Guardian urging its leftist readers not to fear the Muslim Brotherhood. Identifying himself as the Vice-President of the Muslim Brotherhood, Khairat El-Shater wrote, “The success of the Muslim Brotherhood should not frighten anybody: we respect the rights of all religious and political groups.”

A year later, El-Shater had been arrested and charged with terrorism, money-laundering and participating in a banned organization. The arrest of the top Muslim Brotherhood leader was not a simple matter. Egyptian police blockaded his neighborhood and raided his home confiscating computers and mobile phones. It was not the first such arrest for El-Shater. In 1992, Salsabeel, his company, had been raided exposing Brotherhood documents plotting an overthrow of the government The Brotherhood had gotten too cocky too fast. Its election victories in Egypt’s parliament had gone to its head and feeling omnipotent its student movement tried to intimidate other students on campus by putting on black paramilitary uniforms and masks with Islamic slogans, similar to those worn by its Hamas adjunct across the border in Gaza, and conducting a show of force.

The government cracked down and El-Shater went back to prison. But these days prison is a long way from his mind as he meets everyone from the Norwegian Foreign Minister to Senator McCain, who tweeted that he had a “thoughtful conversation” with the Brotherhood leader.

Khairat El-Shater (full name: Mohamed Khairat Saad Abdel Latif el-Shater) is no longer a top leader in a banned movement. The Brotherhood has swept parliament and his investments, frozen after a money-laundering conviction, are his again. The future of Egypt belongs to the Brotherhood and as the chief financier and deputy supreme guide of the group; he is on the ground floor to see those investments pay off.

There is talk of El-Shater becoming Prime Minister, but whether or not he takes a title, he is in the driver’s seat of the Brotherhood’s strategy. The Guardian editorial saw El-Shater in his role of selling the Brotherhood as a moderate reformist organization to the gullible West. That is still his job. Western governments are uncertain about the Brotherhood and Khairat El-Shater is there to present them with a Brotherhood that is as socialist as the left and as capitalist at the right, dedicated to free enterprise, social justice and religious freedom, to open elections and political reforms.

But that Brotherhood is only another mirage in the great desert of Muslim democracy. The Guidance Council runs the Brotherhood and its parliamentary majority, derived from the ranks of the Brotherhood, is bound by oath to obey the Council, not the voters. Despite the illusion of a democratic election, the Brotherhood’s elite will run Egypt.

The Muslim Brotherhood’ s official goal is an Islamic state, its roadmap for getting there is to copy the pro-business Islamic authoritarianism of Turkey’s AKP Party, which cloaked its suppression of the opposition and overthrow of the military in democracy and free enterprise language. Copying the AKP’s commercial oligarchy will be a snap for Khairat El-Shater who oversaw the massive business assets of the Brotherhood.

When the Egyptian government froze El-Shater’s assets, they amounted to nearly 87 million dollars. And that’s still a fraction of the total assets of the Muslim Brotherhood which derive from the tithes of its membership and are reinvested into everything from factories to fast food chains. The Brotherhood is no more committed to free enterprise than Mubarak was. Like him and the Egyptian military, it wants a seat at the top of the oligarchy.

El-Shater already sits on the board of several banks and he owns a number of companies and retail chains and his fortune will only increase as he gains the ability to dictate the economic future of the entire country. The Brotherhood’s survival was largely due to its ability to intertwine its religious, political and commercial interests, raising money as a religious organization, spending it as a political organization and investing it in business enterprises. The conflicts of interest are obvious.El-Shater’s business interests are not incidental to the Brotherhood program; they are the point of it all. What the Brotherhood did with its tithes, it will be able to do on a much larger scale when it controls the Egyptian economy and the sizable foreign investments. The tensions between it and the military are not over Islam, but over the military’s own mirror economic interests. When those issues are resolved, Egypt will be on its way to becoming a fully Islamic oligarchy on the model of Iran or the intermediate model of Turkey.

Driving out the Copts is vital not only for religious reasons, but for economic ones. Turkey’s Varlik Vergisi seizure of property from Christian and Jewish businessmen helped centralize state control of the economy. Coptic Christians are more successful than their Muslim counterparts and those likeliest to leave will be those with the most money, allowing the Brotherhood to gobble up their assets. Suppressing the economic power of the military and the Copts will turn the Brotherhood into an unchallenged oligarchy with near supreme control of the Egyptian economy.

The men who stand to profit the most from the harassment of the Copts are El-Shater and his cronies who are following the National Socialist tactic of persecuting a wealthy minority in order to seize its assets for themselves. While the Muslim Brotherhood makes public statements about protecting the Copts, its hidden hand touches off riots and violence, allowing it to act as persecutor and savior.

France is reeling from a national tragedy on Monday following a horrific attack on an orthodox Jewish school in the southwestern city of Toulouse that left four people dead, among them a young rabbi and three children, and authorities in search of a motive and a killer. French police are already linking the shooting to a series of attacks last week on French paratroopers of North African origin, whose unit had served in Afghanistan. Ballistic tests show that the same gun used in the school attack had earlier been used to shoot uniformed French soldiers in two separate incidents in the Toulouse area. Last Thursday, a gunman shot and killed two soldiers about 30 miles from Toulouse. In a nearly identical incident just four days earlier, a gunman had killed a paratrooper in Toulouse. In all the shootings, the killer had used the same stolen black motorbike to flee the scene.

Despite the connective evidence, questions persist over the motive. Thus the fact that several of the murdered soldiers were Arab and Muslim has fueled speculation that the motive in the school shooting cannot be reduced solely to hatred of Jews. Press accounts have accordingly described the murderer as a “serial killer,” a “madman” and a “terrorist,” emphasizing that his motivation is unclear.Yet even the limited evidence available suggests that such descriptions may well be superfluous. From the systematic way that the murderer pursued the children through the school, shooting “everything that moved” as authorities have described it, suggests that the overriding goal was to kill as many Jewish children as possible. At one point, the killer reportedly cornered an eight-year-old girl, then shot her in the head. The school shooting marks the deadliest attack on Jews in France since the 1982 bombing of the Parisian Jewish restaurant and deli Chez Jo Goldenberg, in which six were killed and 22 wounded.

Moreover, while the school attack came as a national shock in France, it is in keeping with a pattern of virulent anti-Semitism, emanating primarily from the country’s restive Muslim population. On a less deadly scale, France has seen scores of similar attacks over the past decade, many directed at day schools and synagogues. In September 2009, aerosol cans soaked in gasoline were hurled at a Jewish school in Marseille, causing damage. Earlier, in January of that year, a car was set ablaze and crashed into the gates of a Toulouse synagogue. Another car, containing three unused gasoline bombs, was found nearby. In May 2005, three bottles of hydrochloric acid were thrown at the Sinai Jewish school in Paris. The children attending the school were playing in the yard at the time, though none were hurt. In November 2003, an arson attack destroyed a large section of a Jewish school in Gagny in attack. Nicholas Sarkozy, then the interior minister, said the attack had “an anti-Semitic and obviously racist connotation.” In 2006, the school was again targeted by arsonists.

While these attacks have been linked to surges in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the Palestinian intifada, the consistency of the attacks over the years suggests that they are rooted in anti-Jewish enmity, not politics. No case more strongly illustrated the intensity of the hatred for Jews in the French Muslim community than the 2006 murder of 23-year-old Parisian Jew Ilan Halimi. Lured by a girl into the Paris suburb Sceaux, he was set upon by a gang of Muslim youths. After being brutally tortured, stabbed and burned with acid, his body was dumped on the railway tracks, where he was left to die from his wounds. Halimi’s torturers made no attempt to hide their hatred. One gang member later said that he had put out a cigarette on Halimi’s face because he “didn’t like Jews.” Monstrous as the murder was, equally shocking were revelations that many in the Muslim community knew of Halimi’s treatment and whereabouts, yet refused to report it to the police.Based on the ruthlessness of the killer and his choice of victims, it’s hard to avoid at least the suspicion that the school shooting was the latest act of extremist Islamic violence against France’s Jews. The fact that the killer’s victims included Muslims does not necessarily confound the picture. In the past French Muslims have been as outraged about Israel and Jews as they have been by France’s support for U.S.-led efforts in Afghanistan. Some French Muslim soldiers have even refused to serve in Afghanistan on the grounds that they refuse to kill fellow Muslims. Osama bin Laden, in one of his final declarations, had warned in 2011 that France would pay a “high price” for putting troops on Muslim soil. In that context, it’s not difficult to imagine that the attacks on the French Muslim soldiers may have been intended as retaliation for French foreign policy.

As they track down the killer, French authorities are right to focus on the evidence rather than the motive linking the crimes. The gunman may yet turn out to be a lone terrorist with no cohesive purpose. But the history of murderous anti-Semitism in France’s Muslim community counsels that there is nothing inherently inconsistent about the motives of a killer whose ideology drives him to kill both Muslim soldiers and Jewish children.

Five months ago, I wrote here and here detailing how the U.S. government collaborated in creating an anti-American, Islamist-dominated leadership for the Syrian revolution. This leadership group, assembled by the Islamist Turkish regime as the Obama government’s subcontractor, failed immediately. Now it is collapsing openly.

Of the nineteen announced members of the top leadership, I explained, ten of them were Islamists, either Muslim Brotherhood or Salafist. A reliable Syrian opposition source tells me that two more members are secretly Islamist tools. This was far in excess of the proportion of those forces in the revolution. In short, the U.S. government was helping to turn Syria’s revolution over to the Islamists. If this group had succeeded, the West would be facing still another radical Islamist regime that hated the West, wanted to go to war with Israel, and would be imposing a new dictatorship on its country.

Monday, March 19, 2012

Earlier this month, two Palestinian terrorists attacked an Israeli soldier in Hebron and stabbed him with a knife. Despite his wounds, the soldier managed to shoot both terrorists, one of whom was killed while the other was injured.

PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas sent a condolence telegram to the family in which he called the killed terrorist "courageous." The soldier's act of shooting the terrorist who tried to kill him was defined by Abbas as an "assassination." The official PA daily referred to it as a "loathsome crime," while the attempted stabbing of the Israeli soldier was called "legitimate struggle." A few days later Mahmoud Abbas sent his personal representative, Abbas Zaki, to visit the families of both terrorists and to express the leadership's "solidarity." Zaky said that the death of Aram was "cold blooded murder" and "expressed the pride of the Palestinian leadership in this generation and in this heroism."

Palestinian Media Watch reported last year that Abbas sent a grant of $2000 to the family of a terrorist who was killed while attempting to attack Israeli soldiers with pipe bombs.

For more examples of Abbas glorifying terror, click here.For more examples of the PA policy of glorifying terror, click here.

The following are the two reports of Abbas' honoring of the terrorists in the official PA daily:

"President Mahmoud Abbas sent a telegram of condolence to the Abu Aram family in Yatta, in Hebron, for the death of their courageous son, Zakariya Jamal Abu Aram.In his telegram, the President said: 'I was greatly saddened by the announcement of Martyrdom death of your courageous son Zakariya Jamal Abu Aram, who was assassinated by the occupation army. His pure soul has ascended to the heights of glory in defense of the pure land of Palestine and the matters that are holy to our pure nation.'The President denounced this loathsome crime, which was carried out as part of a string of crimes by the occupation army against our defenseless people, with the aim of striking fear into it and dissuading it from continuing in its legitimate struggle for freedom and the establishment of our independent state, with Jerusalem as its capital.'"[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 11, 2012]

"[Fatah] Central Committee member Abbas Zaki yesterday conveyed condolences in the name of President Mahmoud Abbas and the Fatah Central Committee to the family of the Martyr Zakariya Jamal Abu Aram from the town of Yatta in Hebron, who died as a Martyr after being shot by the occupation forces when he tried to prevent the arrest of the prisoner freed in the [Gilad] Shalit [prisoner exchange] deal. Zaki expressed the solidarity of the President and the leadership of Fatah with the family of the Martyr... He pointed out that the cold-blooded murder of Abu Aram is organized crime of the extremist Israeli government... Zaki also visited the family of the injured prisoner Mahmoud Omar Rashid who was also injured in town of Yatta (in the same incident).... He expressed the pride of the Palestinian leadership in this generation and in this heroism."[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 14, 2012]

Own an apartment in Israel but don’t live in it most of the year? Get ready to pay double in property taxes. The cabinet on Sunday adopted a series of recommendations on housing put forward by the Trajtenberg Committee, aiming to fix tax loopholes, reduce costs and add more housing units to a country that has seen home prices balloon in recent years.

This is the fourth section of the Trajtenberg report to be adopted by the cabinet. According to a government statement, approval of the main recommendations of the section is expected to lead to a significant increase in the number of residential apartments available throughout the country. One of the recommendations adopted is aimed at people who own “ghost apartments” — apartments that are not lived in by their owners. Units that stand empty for over six months a year will be charged double the property tax. The government statement said the move is likely to release over 15,000 apartments into the housing market, presumably by encouraging those owners to sell or rent their apartments.

The plan also calls on the state to market 187,000 new housing units over the next five years, 60% of them in high demand areas.

The government will also allocate NIS 800 million over the next five years to increase aid for public housing. The maximum rental assistance for those eligible for public housing will rise from NIS 1,750 per month to NIS 3,000.

Professor Manuel Trajtenberg, who heads the committee, said the recommendations will help thousands of young couples buy apartments.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat welcomed the move to add more units to the housing market, saying the cabinet was following in the footsteps of the Jerusalem Municipality, which already increased municipal taxes on ghost apartments a few months ago, but added, “There is still a long way to go.”

The Trajtenberg Committee was established last August after mass social protests took place across the country.

Why are establishment Americans, both conservative and Lefty, so Establishment? Because they all graduate from the same universities and are trained to be Established and Mindless. One group, the conservatives question America’s slippage into oblivion on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday and occasionally on Saturday.

The other group, the Obama Lefty Society, never questions anything Lefty established……most contemporary American Marxists use Islamofascism as an ally to destroy Western Civilization and its liberty…

But not MARXIST, TAREK FATAH, a Muslim who was raised in India, and now, as I understand it, lives in Canada.

Non-Establishment, Marxist, but apparently not anti-democrat, Tarek Fatah, gives in the video below, an absolutely superb call for awakening by all democrats who believe in Western Society, to defend their world against the cancer now spreading across the Western world called Islamofascism.

Tarek Fatah insists that the religion of Islam is being used as a political force by Islamofascists. Regarding the conflict, he convincingly argues that “the sponge-like spine that we are displaying could lead to the end of civilization as we know it!”

Mr. Fatah is convincing…….He is exceptionally concerned about the Islamists’ infiltration into the American and Canadian governments.

He asks questions…..Why the exploding anti-Semitism now being practiced at University? Why the over-all protections afforded Islamist despite all of their terrorism? Why did it take only 4 years to defeat the world’s greatest military force in defeating Nazi Germany, “and in ten years we couldn’t beat Osama bin Laden? Why doesn’t anyone pay attention to the terror trials which come up every few months? Because…..

“WE HAVE SUBCONTRACTED FOR SOME GLADIATOR TO FIGHT OUR BATTLES, WHO WILL TAKE CARE OF US!”

We make noise at our sport events but are silent in defending out prescious Wester culture.

Tarek Fatah seems to respect Western culture and is extremely concerned that 3 FASCIST Muslim Brother infilatrators have infiltrated “right up to” Obama’s White House. He identifies one as Rashad Hassain, a pro jihadist.

In an article at the American Thinker, Feb. 18, 2010, J. C. Arenas wrote:

“A quick look into Hussain reveals that he has the background of a typical Obama administration official: Ivy League education, career in public service, and an added bonus, a connection to the Soros family.

In 2003, Hussain was named a Fellow to the Paul and Daisy Soros Foundation:

RASHAD HUSSAIN was born in 1978. He earned his JD from Yale University and his MPA from Harvard University. His parents are naturalized citizens from India and live in Plano, Texas. Elected to Phi Beta Kappa, he holds bachelor’s degrees with highest distinction in both philosophy and political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which he completed in two years. He received highest honors for his philosophy thesis, “Assessing the Theistic Implications of Big Bang Cosmological Theory.” Rashad also holds an MA from Harvard University in Near Eastern languages and civilizations. He finds his heritage central to his identity as a Muslim American and his career goals, especially in light of events in recent history. Rashad has worked extensively on Capitol Hill, both as an intern in the office of former House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt during the summer of 2000 and as a legislative aide on the House Judiciary Committee, where he worked for a year and a half between his time at Harvard University and Yale University. Rashad sees his varied academic interests converging and feels that his study of international affairs, law, and security can form a salient combination for addressing many contemporary legal and public policy issues. He finished a clerkship for Judge Damon Keith on the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Detroit, MI and was a Trial Attorney at the US Department of Justice. Now he is deputy associate counsel to President Barack Obama.

Paul Soros is the elder brother of George Soros, the anti-capitalist billionaire who drives the Democrat Party–and an early supporter of Barack Obama.”

Tarek Fatah speaks with passion and apparent accuracy. See and hear him by clicking below:

Sunday, March 18, 2012

On March 14, I attended a conference that considered the question, "Jerusalem: How Important Is It to the Muslims?" Held at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center, it was jointly sponsored by the Center and the Middle East Forum, of Philadelphia.

Speakers, in order of their presentations, were:

Dr. Daniel Pipes, founder and director of the Middle East Forum. Historian and commentator, he is the author of several books and position papers. His focus is American foreign policy, the Middle East and Islam. Dr. Moshe Sharon, professor of early Islamic history at Hebrew University. A specialist in Arabic epigraphy, he has recorded all the Arabic inscriptions in the Holy land, and is the author of several books..

Credit: FrontpageJerusalem

Dr. Mordecai Nisan, a scholar in Middle Eastern studies at Hebrew University and a contributing expert to the Ariel Center for Policy Research. He is the author of several books.

Credit: jweekly

Dr. Yitzhak Reiter, Ashkelon Academic College. His expertise encompasses conflict resolution at sacred sites and holy places, Islamic law and religious institutions. He is the author of several books, most recently, The New Islamic Ethos of Jerusalem -- Between Reality and Imagination.

Credit: jiis

Dr. Mordecai (Moti) Kedar is a lecturer in Arabic at Bar Ilan University; his areas of expertise include Islam, Islamic movements and Arab societies. He had 20 years of experience with IDF Intelligence.

Credit: cjnnews

Itamar Marcus, founder and director of Palestinian Media Watch.

Credit: FrontpageJerusalem

Dr. Dore Gold, president, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. He has served as Israeli ambassador to the UN, and advisor to prime ministers. He is the author of several books, including, The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West, and the Future of the Holy City.

credit: dore-gold

~~~~~~~~~~

I offer the above information so that you might have a sense of the conference, but also because it provides a list of excellent references for issues related to Islam and Jerusalem. Of particular note:

Daniel Pipe's Middle East Quarterly (http://www.meforum.org/meq/) provides a cogent and serious level of analysis by various commentators and academics. Recommended also are articles by Moshe Sharon and articles and books by Dore Gold -- as well as briefings and analyses written by others for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (http://www.jcpa.org/). The Palestinian Media Watch (http://www.palwatch.org/) is an excellent source for what the Arabs are saying. Moti Kedar, who travels to the US frequently, is a dynamic and highly-informed speaker.

~~~~~~~~~~

Here, I will, for the most part, consolidate and summarize what was said at the conference.

What must be emphasized at the outset is that Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Koran and is not directly associated with Muhammad (with more on this below).

A major thrust of several of the talks was that the position of Islam with regard to Jerusalem has shifted historically depending on circumstances. It is not a constant. Daniel Pipes says that it is related to the political climate of a particular time. For example, during the Crusades, Muslim interest increased because of Christian control of the city. Just as it became true again with Jewish activity in Jerusalem -- which is the situation in which we find ourselves today.

In 682, there were political tensions in Mecca, fighting between Medina and Mecca. So, for political reasons an alternative for pilgrimage purposes was provided via Jerusalem. This is a typical example of transient importance attached to Jerusalem because of political circumstances and not because of the inherent value that was seen to adhere to Jerusalem.

There were many points at which Jerusalem was not central to Islam. Dore Gold provided an example from the 14th century, with Islamic historian Ibn Tair, who didn't see Jerusalem or Hevron as sacred.

Similarly, Moti Kedar shared a text written in 1925 by the Supreme Muslim Council. In referring to the Temple Mount, this book says, "Its identity with the site of Solomon's Temple is beyond dispute." Today Muslims vociferously deny this reality.

We see downplaying of the importance of Jerusalem with the Jordanians: When they controlled eastern Jerusalem, they wanted to build up Amman as more important -- actually moved the Wakf (Islamic trust) offices there. I will add that it was only after almost 19 years of Jordanian control of eastern Jerusalem that King Hussein decided to build a palace there -- the king of Jordan didn't spend time in Jerusalem even though he might have. But shortly after came the Six Day War. That "palace" sits only partially built until today.

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What makes current claims of the importance of Jerusalem to Islam so difficult to combat is that, as Moshe Sharon has put it, "Islam has Islamisized history and geography." Islam, they say, existed since the beginning of the world -- Muhammad was created before Adam and then was dissolved. The dust of Muhammad was used to create Adam, who was a Moslem, as was Avraham, Isaac, Moses, etc. Truth is only with Islam. There is a text, "Islamic holy places in Jerusalem before Islam."

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There is a very famous Koranic verse -- Sura 17.1 -- that reads "Blessed be he who transported his servant from the near holy mosque to the farthest mosque." There is an historical explanation for what this referred to. Jerusalem, however, was then read into this retroactively in about 715, in the time of the Umayyads, who built al-Aksa. Today the verse is cited as proof that Allah transported Muhammad during his "night journey" to the farthest mosque, which is al-Aksa mosque in Jerusalem. But the al-Aksa mosque was built after the verse had been written.

~~~~~~~~~~

Yitzhak Reiter says that during the last 50 years, a new Islamic ethos of Jerusalem has been developed to serve the political reality:

-- a new history has been written-- Jewish attachment to Jerusalem is denied-- the status of al-Quds (Jerusalem) has been elevated-- all of Jerusalem and all of Palestine is claimed as wakf (holy Islamic trust)-- warnings are sounded that the al-Aksa mosque is in danger (threatened by the Jews)

A Muslim Arab history has been created that predates the arrival of the Hebrews in Canaan.

Says one Muslim writer: "The Canaanites and Jebusites and Amalekites came to Palestine from the Arabian Peninsula." Of course, the intent here is to show that those who inhabited Palestine from an early time were Arabs. But I rather liked this because it inadvertently ties Amalek to the Arabs.

There is denial of the fact of a Temple on the Mount. (It was in Yemen, or one of a dozen different places named without consistency.) Jewish presence is recent and there is not even any Jewish attachment to the Kotel, the Western Wall.

~~~~~~~~~~

Mordecai Kedar, taking an approach that is significantly different from the other speakers, says that the underlying motivation for the Muslim approach to Jerusalem is essentially theological and not political. I found this to be exceedingly elucidating:

From its inception, Islam was viewed as an illegitimate religion; Muhammad was accused of simply recycling the earlier religions (saying that Moses, Jesus, etc. are all Muslim prophets). There was a struggle to prove that it was legitimate and independent -- this became an obsession. The approach that was adopted was to say that Islam was meant to replace the earlier religions. (It is for this reason that mosques are built on top of churches -- or in the instance of the Temple Mount, the Dome of the Rock on top of the ruins of the Temple.) Islam is not intended to live side-by-side with other religions.

Thus, 1948, when a Jewish nation was re-established in the traditional homeland of the Jews, it was a disaster for the Muslims. This, I believe, makes the concept of the Nakba (the view that the founding of the State of Israel is a "catastrophe") clearer than a purely political interpretation does. Islam was supposed to replace Judaism. How can there be a resurgence of Judaism? It undercuts the very raison d'etre of Islam. And then in 1967, the Jews took the Temple Mount as well.

Says Kedar, when Israel builds, proving that Jews are here to stay, it is unbearable for Muslims.

Elucidating, indeed, but holds out no promise for comprise or peace.

~~~~~~~~~~

As part of his presentation, Kedar showed a video of his interview on Jerusalem done on al-Jazeera. It's delicious, and I provide the link to it here for your viewing pleasure:

"There is a view that where it [the Dome of the Rock] stands was the Holy of Holies of the fictitious Temple – and by the way, that is merely an illusion. There is no remnant of it. It's a myth. A story of no value, like the Arabian Nights, and other legends… Only in Palestine… [after] 60 years of digging, and they've found nothing at all. Not a water jug, not a coin, not any earthen vessel, no bronze weapons, no piece of metal, absolutely nothing of this myth, because it's a myth and a lie. This digging has not left a single meter [unturned], but it has achieved absolutely nothing."

http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=487 (scroll down a bit for the clip)

Surely, Dr. Amar knows better. But what of the people who hear his statement?

~~~~~~~~~~

Dore Gold's final presentation emphasized the need for all of Jerusalem to stay in Jewish hands. With the radicalization of Islam, he says, we are seeing something that was not the case historically. Even when Jews were second class citizens in Muslim lands, they were able to have synagogues. But now, there is a tendency to see the Muslim destruction of holy sites of other religions. Of course it was the case in eastern Jerusalem during the Jordanian occupation -- when synagogues were systematically destroyed. But also with the eager rush by Palestinian Arab Muslims to damage Joseph's Tomb in Shechem. And the destruction by the Taliban of ancient Buddhist statues -- a national treasure -- in Afghanistan. And the disrespect of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem by Muslims. And what is happening to Coptic Churches in Egypt.

The Christian world, by and large, is promoting a "two state solution" that would put Christian sites into Muslim hands. But they had best ask themselves who is going to protect the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which is in eastern Jerusalem, if it is under the control of Palestinian Arabs.

See my website at www.arlenefromisrael.info Contact Arlene at akushner@netvision.net.il

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Official Palestinian Authority TV has produced and broadcast a music video imitating the Jewish tradition regarding Jerusalem, mimicking the Biblical expression "If I forget thee, oh Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill, may my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember thee" [Psalms 137:5]. This verse from the Book of Psalms expresses Jewish longing for Jerusalem after its destruction and the Jewish exile. The song broadcast on PA TV and performed by an Egyptian singer includes scenes from the markets in the old city in Jerusalem, Arab children playing, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Rock and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, blended with scenes of riots, stone-throwing, and clashes with Israeli soldiers in Jerusalem. No Jewish holy sites or landmarks are shown and the only Israelis seen are soldiers.

The song, which mimics the Jewish longing for Jerusalem described in the Bible, includes the following lyrics:

"May my right arm forget me, may my left arm forget me.May the light of my eyes and the openings of songs forget me, if I forget Jerusalem." (See full lyrics below)

Since the Palestinian Authority was established under the Oslo Accords in 1993, the PA has undertaken a rewriting of history which includes the misappropriation of Jewish history, artifacts, traditions, texts, as if they had a Palestinian historical connection. Palestinian Media Watch has documented a number of examples of the PA mimicking and expropriating Jewish tradition, while claiming Jewish history to be a falsification of the "authentic ancient Palestinian" history.

Last week, Palestinian Media Watch reported on the PA's misrepresention of Hebrew coins minted in 66 CE, four years prior to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by Rome, as Palestinian coins.

The Palestinian claim that Jerusalem has been the "capital" of a "state of Palestine" is another example of this misrepresentation. While historically there never was a Palestinian state and Jerusalem never was an Arab or Muslim capital, the PA Minister of Religious Affairs Mahmoud Al-Habbash warned in a Friday sermon that "unless Jerusalem will be Palestinian, as it was throughout history, the capital of the Palestinian state... there is no peace."

The purpose of the current PA TV song may be to generate Palestinian feelings for "ancient Palestinian roots" in Jerusalem while denying Jewish history there. PMW reported on a PA TV broadcast of an interview with a Palestinian historian who told the audience that the term "If I forget thee, oh Jerusalem" was not from the Bible, but was a crusader term misappropriated by modern Zionism to falsify a Jewish connection to Jerusalem.

Another video broadcast by PA TV last week also denied Jewish history in the land, claiming it as Palestinian. The video showed "Palestine" symbolized by a woman in white, fleeing three different foreign rulers through history - the Romans, the Crusaders, and the British, and finally being liberated from Jewish-Israeli rule by a new Muslim "Saladin" conqueror.

The following are the words of the song produced and broadcast by PA TV:

"May my right arm forget me, may my left arm forget me.May the light of my eyes and the openings of songs forget me, if I forget Jerusalem.May the joy in my eyes and the green world, forget me.May every heart forget me.May the smile of an infant forget me, if I forget Jerusalem.May my joys forget me, may my morning forget me.May the suns forget me and may people deny me,[with] the stars, the moon, the rain and the trees.May the streets and the houses forget me.May I wilt, may I wilt and die if I forget Jerusalem.May the joy of the day, the shadow of the houses, the sound of strings forget me,and the laughter of every neighbor, if I forget Jerusalem.May the smiles of children and the expectation of a meeting forget me,the joy of a birth and the gates of the entire city,if I forget Jerusalem."

Text on screen at the end of the video: "Produced by PA TV, 2010"[PA TV (Fatah), Feb. 25 and March 11, 2012]Join Our Mailing List

Caroline Glick & Mark Levin: The Israeli Solution -- A One-State Pla

Why Israel Opposes International Forces in the Jordan Valley

U.S. scholars' group votes in favor of academic boycott of Israel

Yet another indication of the absolute corruption of American academia today. "US scholars' group votes in favor of academic boycott of Israel," from the Jerusalem Post, December 16: NEW YORK – The 5,000-member American Studies Association (ASA), which describes itself as “the nation’s oldest and largest association devoted to...http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/12/us-scholars-group-votes-in-favor-of-academic-boycott-of-israel.html

Israel Living Prophecy

A senior New Israel Fund officer told a U.S. official in 2010 that the disappearance of the Jewish state would not be a tragedy, according to a document that was leaked by Wikileaks...She commented that she believed that in 100 years Israel would be majority Arab and that the disappearance of a Jewish state would not be the tragedy that Israelis fear since it would become more democratic.

Mideast expert Michael Widlanski: Fatah is a joke

US-Israeli talks focus on Ahmadinejad's possible ouster

How to exploit the deep cracks forming in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's administration for removing the Iranian president was a top item on the agenda of the high-level talks between Barack Obama's advisers and Israeli officials at Mossad headquarters in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv, Wednesday, July 29.

DEBKAfile's Iranian sources report that Ahmadinejad's cabinet is falling apart; of his original lineup of 21 ministers, only nine remain at their posts.

The Identity Of The Land

Why the Palestinians need to recognize the Jewish State

We do NOT support a 2-state solution

A January 2009 poll found that Americans oppose creating a Palestinian state by 45-31 percent. A February 2009 Maagar Mohot Survey Institute poll has also shown that Israelis oppose creating a Palestinian state by 51-32 percent.

Many other polls tell a similar story.

These figures suggest that Americans and Israelis have understood that creating a Palestinian state under current conditions will not bring peace but merely another terror state.

Netanya,Israel

Jerusalem At Night

Why reconstruct Gaza without making demands

- that Shalit be release without convicted terrorists being released by Israel in exchange,

- that the US be put in charge of the southern border to ensure that Hamas isn’t rearmed?

- that their three preconditions be accepted by Hamas, i.e. agree to all former agreements,recognize Israel and renounce terror

- that Hamas amend their Charter

- That Hamas disconnect from Iran

The answer is that they don’t want to.

Children of Hamas

Picture of Hamas children the media does not show you

IDF: Civilian Deaths in Gaza Less than 25% of Total

A maximum of 25% of the Palestinians killed in Gaza since the beginning of the Israeli operation are innocent civilians, the head of the IDF's Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration (CLA), Col. Moshe Levi, said Wednesday. According to Palestinian medical officials, Israel has killed some 1,000 Palestinians and more than half of them are civilians. Levi said the CLA had compiled a list with the names of 900 Palestinians killed during the fighting. He said that 150 names were of women, children and elderly, and that the maximum number of civilians killed so far was 250. Levi also dismissed claims that 43 Palestinians were killed in an IDF attack on a Hamas terror cell that was firing mortars at Israeli forces from within an UNRWA school in Jabalya. Levi said 21 Palestinians were killed in the attack, including a number of Hamas operatives. (Jerusalem Post)

Hamas teaching the children of Gaza

An Iranian reformist daily newspaper has criticized Hamas "for risking lives of civilians, amongst them children, by hiding its forces in nurseries and hospitals." This is reported in today's Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam. The Palestinian daily adds that in response the Iranian government has closed the newspaper.

"The Iranian news agency "Irna" reported yesterday, that the Iranian Culture Ministry has closed the reformist daily newspaper "Karjo Zaran", because it published a report that included criticism of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). On December 30 the paper published a statement of a reformist student organization, that has criticized Hamas for risking lives of civilians, amongst them children, by hiding its forces in nurseries and hospitals. The statement was published whilst the Iranian government expresses a unified stands against Israel, and Tehran is overwhelmed by demonstrations against Israel."

[Al-Ayyam, Jan. 1, 2009] Thanks PMW

Iran-backed Hamas Rocket, Mortar Attacks and Nuclear Developments

9,400+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza since 2003. [1]3,200+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza in 2008 alone. [2]6,500+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. [3]543+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza into Israeli territory during the ceasefire from June 19 to Dec. 19, 2008. [4]28 deaths caused by rockets and mortars fired from Gaza into Israel since 2001. The dead include Israelis, Palestinians and foreign workers. Since the ceasefire ended, Iran-backed Palestinian groups in Gaza fired rockets and mortars that killed an Israeli-Arab construction worker and a mother of four who was seeking shelter in a bus station as a rocket warning siren sounded. [5]1,000+ people in Israel injured from rockets and mortars fired from Gaza since 2001, including Israelis, Palestinians and foreign workers. Since the ceasefire, 44 Israelis have been injured and 200 have been treated for shock. [6]Thanks Israel Project

It began with this...

The British Foreign Office, November 2nd, 1917Dear Lord Rothschild,I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.

“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate theachievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities inPalestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.2

Signed,Arthur James Balfour[Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs]

Favorite Books

While Europe Slept

About Me

Semi-retired Professor, now also permanent resident of Israel;divides time between both countries-serves on several Boards of Directors for Israel advocacy groups;Chana, resident of Jerusalem, JCPA member

Syria is an Occupier-Are You Listening World?

As of this minute, Syria occupies at least 177 square miles of Lebanese soil. That you are now reading about it for the first time is as much a scandal as the occupation itself.

The news comes by way of a fact-finding survey of the Lebanese-Syrian border just produced by the International Lebanese Committee for UN Security Council Resolution 1559, an American NGO that has consultative status with the UN. In meticulous detail - supplemented by photographs and satellite images - the authors describe precisely where and how Lebanon has been infiltrated.

Though the land grabs are small affairs individually, they collectively add up to an area amounting to about 4% of Lebanese soil - in U.S. terms, the proportional equivalent of Arizona. Of particular note is that the area of Syrian conquest dwarves that of the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms which amount to an area of about 12 square miles.

It would be nice to see the Arab world protest this case of illegal occupation, given its passions about the subject.

Information worth Possessing

"Israel gave the Palestinians an autonomy in 42% of the West Bank and Gaza after the Oslo accords in the early 90's. Over 92% of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza were then under the administration of the Palestinian Authority and its Chairman Yasser Arafat.

"Israel is surrounded by 10 hostile Arab countries who do not even recognize its right to exist ( Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria, Lybia, Morocco, Tunisia, Aden) and Iran"